Gpsy Feelin is a crew that kind of baffles me. I think their Euro-ness is incompatible with something American in me. Nonetheless, they put together some of the most memorable segments I’ve seen in a long time. From what I can gather, this is a slice of their upcoming release, “Feelings,” that features a skier named Leo Taillefer. We can only hope that all the “major” film companies put as much work into finding features to film on.
Archive
For September, 2010
The first 2:30 of this webisode is the type of fun that has me checking Weather.com compulsively while praying for a cold snap.
Mike Nick is one of those guys we think every skier needs to be familiar with. If we were to invent an official barometer for “newbness,” it’d start with a compulsory list of 3 major Mike Nick contributions to our sport. The man has been one of the most influential skiers for well over a decade, and on a personal note, my life as a skier would not be the same if it weren’t for SB1, Mike Nick Pro Model Skiboards (I skiboarded for 1 season), Stereotype, Line Skis, and Siver Cartel.
This past summer we caught up with the “King of the Kang” to discuss the past and future of filming, fashion, skiing, skiboarding, and the Orage Masters. Those of you who’ve been around awhile can enjoy the nostalgia, and you younger dudes who were born into a pre-existing freeski culture, please take a second to learn where it all came from.
I must first apologize. After a bout of broken ankle-induced fury produced article after article about other stupid shit to do in the summer than ski, each more soaking in sarcasm than the one before, I noticed a quiet dim take over BroBomb in July. I wrote Jon to see what the deal was and his response, from his sweaty hood apartment in Philly: stacks of grade-A nerd material lying around, a victim of his grad school pursuits, was short and crass, and complained about a few of the aforementioned situations and how when he is sweating through his laptop he can’t write about skiing anymore. So I took my hiatus and with an invite from BroBomb ghost writer and now hooked-the-fuck-up sonofabitch Mike Rogge, began writing for the one ski magazine whose editors might actually own a thesaurus, Powder Magazine.
I’m on vacation. Bitch!
With my little spare time during this trip, I’d do a quick whittle on the computer and send it Rogge a day late after furiously e-mailing anyone I saw with a point-and-shoot for photos for the articles, and occasionally sneak a snowboarder in the series if the shot was far enough away, because the skiers apparently weren’t vain enough to take any photos of their vacation. As excited e-mails came back from the Powder camp extolling my literary virtues while somehow avoiding requests for a free subscription and Jon’s slothish enthusiasm for the website started to melt into the pavement around early August, I had lost the confidence to publish another off-the-cuff, completely unresearched masterpiece destroying some poor honest skier’s efforts with only the information received in a Facebook message from a third party to base my claims on.
You know those dumb Red Bull commercials with dudes in chicken costumes on gliders or pigs with wings trying to fly, but ultimately crashing into a river? The ones for that event with the name you can’t pronounce? It’s called Flugtag, which is German for “Flying Day”. It was in Philly, or more accurately, really beautiful Camden, NJ this Labor Day weekend. Free Red Bull was harder to find than you might think, but the day was saved by the presence of the Shane McConkey inspired “Toss Your Sauce” team! We had the privilege, along with 70,000 other people, to watch Saucer Boy ride again and crash into the Delaware River. We caught up with the team captain, Ben Harmer, to get some details about this absolutely absurd event and the Toss Your Sauce crew.
It’s no secret that the BroBomb collective was less than blown away by Nimbus Independent’s 2009 project Contrast—a difficult admission as the Nimbus crew’s attitudes towards skiing and ski culture are so in step with our own. Where Contrast was overly-long and mired in philosophical meanderings of the “skiing as life” variety, En Route Nomads is a lesson in film making brevity and, fortunately for us, the shots themselves do all the necessary talking.
There’s something deeply instinctual about recognizing the change in seasons. I don’t really care what a calendar says; seasons don’t care about our arbitrary designations. Seasons change at different times in different places, so maybe you’ve already felt autumn crash your summer party, or maybe you’re still sweating it out. For me the change hit hard yesterday—it was dreary, rainy, cool, and I spent the morning killing time until the Patriots-Bengals game that would occupy the majority of my afternoon. That’s fall.
GroupHome is a somewhat amorphous new filming project based loosely out of Salt Lake City. Shayne Metos will be filming the magic, and they’re planning releases as often as they remember to actually film what they do. I’ve even heard talk of a longer release at the end of the season, so keep those fingers crossed. The first edit came out of Windell’s a few weeks ago, and we hope to see more once the white stuff starts falling on a mountain near you.
Surface week. p: Ian Matteson
BroBomb: Shayne, you’re planning a new edit series under the name GroupHome for this season, let’s get the details out of the way first: Who are you and what’s your background?
Shayne: My name is Shayne Metos and I’m a designer and aspiring renaissance man from Salt Lake City, Utah. I love riding snow with my friends and random strangers.
My friend Brooke over at Yobeat was recently venting her frustrations about how no one knows the difference between “premiere” and “premier” when announcing snow film events. I know we have some amateur Angry Grammarians in our readership, so I decided to help her cause with a public service announcement about the proper use of these words:
It’s that time of year when you will likely be writing about many video premieres. While you’ve seen it both ways because no one seems to know the difference, the appropriate spelling when describing an event is “PREMIERE.” Without the final E it refers to the “first in rank.” So if you wanted to say the event was the best of the season, drop that e. Otherwise it is PREMIERE.
